New Thai link sees Mahidol Uni students joins Hudds PG scheme

A Memorandum of Understanding, signed by both universities, will enable Thai students to enrol on the Huddersfield Master’s degrees in Investigative Psychology or undertake PhD research

A LEADING university in Thailand will collaborate with the University of Huddersfield to teach and research psychological solutions to a wide range of social problems such as crime and threats to cyber-security.

The link forged with Mahidol University, which has its main campus in Bangkok, will result in Thai students moving to Huddersfield to work towards Master’s degrees in Investigative Psychology or undertake PhD research.  It is also planned that UK-based students will travel to Thailand and there will be staff exchanges.

Instrumental in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which has now been signed by senior figures at Huddersfield and Mahidol, were Dr John Synnott and Professor Maria Ioannou, investigative and forensic psychologists who direct the University of Huddersfield’s Secure Societies Institute.

In early 2019, the pair visited Thailand and their ten-day schedule included meetings with key figures in the Thai government, Higher Education sector, the prison service and the Royal Thai Police, plus delivering keynote lectures on investigative and forensic psychology. 

Scholarly ties

Dr Synnott and Professor Ioannou also visited Mahidol University and held talks that led to the MoU, now formalised during a ceremony at the University of Huddersfield.  The signatories were Professor Andrew Ball, who is Huddersfield’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, alongside Professor Luechai Sri-Ngernyuang, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Mahidol.

The MoU – initially three years in duration – states that the two institutions “wish to expand scholarly ties and promote closer academic collaboration”.  In addition to student-staff exchanges and Master’s and PhD programmes, there will also be scientific meetings on subjects of mutual interest to the two universities.

After the signing ceremony, Professor Sri-Ngernyuang, whose university has some 35,000 students and the biggest research budget in Thailand, said that the University of Huddersfield’s expertise in investigative psychology would be of great assistance not only to Thailand but to the whole Asian region.

He added that although social sciences were the initial focus of the MoU, there might also be scope for the Huddersfield-Mahidol collaboration to take in a wide variety of subjects.  Mahidol University, similar to the University of Huddersfield, has faculties covering a broad range of disciplines.

The Thai delegation that attended the MoU signing ceremony also included Dr Thanansak Bawornnantakum and Dr Suppakorn Poonyarith of Mahidol’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities.